OSNews

I think a lot of people have been awfully free with broad proclamations about "average users." I am apparently supposed to accept as obvious fact the wildly varying, mutually contradictory claims about what the "average user" wants or needs, or how he or she thinks.

But if I synthesize everything I've ever read about what the "average user" wants, and see where they *tend* to overlap:

(*) The average user is a complete and total numbskull - we are talking massive DNA damage - who doesn't understand anything about computers and cannot in most cases count to ten. The average user can communicate only in grunts.

(*) The average user is illiterate and unable to read, and it is unreasonable to ask them to do so to use their computers. Ever. Also, the F1 key is just way too far off of the keyboard, so it's doubly unreasonable to expect users to hit it to read the help system. It could take a quest of Lord of the Rings proportions just to reach that key, and then the strange language with its mysterious right-clicks and pull-down menus (!?) are bound to confuse even the brightest among this simian class.

(*) Things should be designed primarily for these users. Developers should slavishly serve the needs of complete knuckle-dragging morons. No other segment matters because, this is the "average user."

(*) There should be no learning curve to use a computer. Infants who are unable to independently hold their heads upright should be able to dash off a nice webpage upon encountering a computer for the first time in their life.

(*) Power users, scientists, academics, and "geeks" are completely and totally irrelevant to OS design and should be completely ignored when you're designing an OS for the masses. In fact, they should be chopped up and used for food, Soylent Green style.

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Alright, then we have:

(*) The average user is obsessed with eye-candy.

(*) The average user doesn't care about eye-candy. He just wants to *get work done*.

(*) People who just want to *get work done* are metaphysically superior to those who do other things with their systems - a Master Race of sorts, and...

(*) Gamers are the most important sector of the computer market, who must be pandered to at all costs.

(*) Gamers are completely unimportant. What counts is the Enterprise, where everyone hates OSes which look good, and prefer ugly, workmanlike interfaces. CDE from about 6 years ago seems to be about all anyone in business can tolerate.

(*) Users are obsessed with the cost of their operating system and aren't going to put up with MS's breadhead crap any longer.

(*) Users don't care about the cost of their OS because they get it pre-installed on their systems.

(*) Users aren't going to put up with massive amounts of change! They're not a bunch of nerds who have time or desire to learn all sorts of new stuff.

(*) Users aren't going to put up with STAGNATION. When they see their next door neighbor running a shiny new OS, they're going to insist on it too. That's why Linux never succeeds. Three words: TEXT BASED INSTALLERS.

(*) Your average user wants web pages with lots of Flash and graphics and animation because they expect that kind of stuff, being all Bruckheimered into oblivion - bludgeoned in fact, by pop culture.

(*) Average users HATE flash and graphics and animation and stuff on web pages because they are part of the beknighted Nietzschean Ubermensch class of people who just WANT TO GET WORK DONE.

I would like to call, therefore, for an immediate halt to any claims about the "average user" until it can be determined that:

(a) such a thing exists.
(b) such a thing can be quantified.
(c) such a things wants can be objectively determined.

Otherwise, what I see, is a whole lot of people Just Making Crap Up.